Atmosphere in ’60s made violence possible

The actions of some Mississippi law enforcement officers in the 1960s helped to create an atmosphere of fear, intimidation and violence for citizens.

Cleo McDonald outside the movie theater where he said then-police officer Richard Willis threatened to castrate him

As I reported in Sunday’s Clarion-Ledger, Richard Willis was one of those officers, according to FBI records.

FBI records identify more than a dozen people as victims of violence by law enforcement in Philadelphia, Miss., and Willis, then a police officer, was reportedly involved in the beatings of at least seven black men.

“Sometimes I think I’m lucky to be alive,” recalled Cleo McDonald, now 64, who said he ran from Willis and another officer after he said Willis threatened to castrate him in 1963. “It was not only blacks scared. The whites were just as scared as we were.”

Willis — one of the last living suspects in the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi — could still be prosecuted in the Ku Klux Klan’s June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

Pat Bennett, a former prosecutor and professor at Mississippi College School of Law, said proof of violence and harassment by Willis or other suspects could be introduced as evidence. “If you use it to show proof of motive, you may be able to get it in,” she said.

Willis could not be reached for comment, but he previously has refused to discuss the case.

FBI documents show a similar pattern of violence against African Americans by other suspects in the slayings.

Lawrence Rainey, who served as sheriff of Neshoba County, shot to death two black men, one in 1959 and another in 1962. Each was ruled justifiable homicide.

In 1967, Rainey and Willis were tried with 18 other men on federal conspiracy charges in connection with the three killings. Both were acquitted, but Deputy Cecil Price was convicted. Price and Rainey since have died.

The only suspect ever tried for murder in the killings, Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted in 2005 on three manslaughter charges and is serving 60 years in prison.

Former inmate Larry Ellis told FBI agents last year that Killen, as a prisoner, described how law enforcement worked hand in hand with Klansmen.

“Nobody ever knew it was policy for them to call the boys when they arrested any n—–s,” Ellis quoted Killen as saying. “If it was our local boys, our own local n—–s, they’d let the boys beat their … butts good, unless they did something to a white person.”

Ellis said Killen described Willis as “gung-ho. He hated n—–s and was used a lot for the violent stuff.”

That frightful night in 1963 when McDonald said Willis threatened him with castration, he said he ran to the home of a highway patrolman, Maynard King, who intervened and kept McDonald from being hurt.

Another time when he was eating at a cafe with other black men, McDonald said Willis came in and bellowed, “All you n—–s, up against the wall.”

McDonald said Willis searched each of them for weapons before coming to an elderly black man. McDonald said Willis shoved his pistol into the man’s nose and remarked, “If you even breathe, I’ll kill you.”

The man obeyed, McDonald said. When Willis took the gun away, the man fell to the floor, gasping for air, McDonald said.

John Dittmer, author of Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, said many law enforcement officers in those days had carte blanche to do as they pleased. “I’m amazed more people weren’t killed back then.”

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About The Author

Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., runs Journey to Justice, a blog that explores the intersection of justice and culture in this place we call the United States​. His work has helped put four Klansmen behind bars, including the assassin of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in 1963 and the man who orchestrated the Klan’s 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. His latest stories have helped lead to the arrest of serial killer suspect Felix Vail — the last known person seen with three women. Mitchell, a 2009 MacArthur fellow, is writing a book on cold cases from the civil rights era.